Conversation with Steven Seidenberg — Interdisciplinary Artist | Photographer | Author: Beauty in the Margins of Perception — Learning to See Through Repetition and the Act of Noticing

What if art is not about creating something new — but about learning how to see what has always been there? What if attention is not passive observation, but an active, disciplined act of perception? And what if what we overlook — the marginal, the infrastructural, the seemingly insignificant — is precisely where meaning quietly accumulates? In this expansive and contemplative conversation, I sit down with Steven Seidenberg — an interdisciplinary artist whose work moves across visual and semantic languages to explore how attention, perception, and meaning are constructed. 

00:00:00 – 00:10:45 : Steven explains that his creative life is not built around a single medium, but multiple “echoing” practices. Rather than separating disciplines, he sees them as reflections of the same underlying sensibility.

00:10:45 – 00:15:55 : Steven’s work consistently turns toward spaces that are overlooked, infrastructural, peripheral, and politically or economically neglected. But he makes an important distinction: not all empty spaces are abandoned — many are simply disregarded. This reframes the lens from aesthetic curiosity to structural awareness, and from visual emptiness to historical and political residue.At the same time, these spaces must hold compositional potential. 

00:15:55 – 00:27:10: One of the most defining principles of Steven’s work is his commitment to series-based practice. He does not take isolated photographs. Because repetition allows transformation: the ordinary becomes uncanny, the overlooked becomes visible, and the insignificant becomes emotionally charged. 

00:27:10 – 00:34:20: Steven sees audience reception as structurally limited rather than contingent: not everyone will understand or respond to the work, and this is not a failure but part of how art exists. He resists adjusting work to market expectations or simplifying it for accessibility, prioritising internal integrity. Yet he does not reject audience altogether — art always exists in relation to reception, but instead of serving a predefined public, it gradually shapes its own audience over time.

00:34:20 – 00:39:13 :  Steven reflects on his project photographing plastic flowers in cemeteries. These objects exist in tension: artificial material placed in sacred space; objects meant to endure, yet slowly degrading; symbols of care, yet subject to neglect. What draws him is not the object itself, but the contradiction it holds — permanence versus decay, artificial versus organic, memory versus erosion. 

00:39:13 – 00:46:18 : His writing sits at the intersection of philosophy, literature, and critique of the Western intellectual tradition. Rather than treating it as fixed authority, he uses writing to stretch and test its limits — sometimes through conceptual intensity, sometimes through irony or parody, where humour and philosophical depth coexist. His work also holds multiple registers at once — intellectual, emotional, aesthetic, and rhythmic.

00:46:18 – 00:51:40 : Steven sees artistic voice as something formed through engagement rather than isolated invention. It develops through sustained exposure to other works, including imitation and even failed imitation.

00:51:40 – 01:07:17 : Steven frames contemporary life as a condition of fragmented attention, which produces constant presence without true perception. Moments of unknowing are not absence, but conditions for clarity and relational depth, both in art and in life. He closes with a grounding principle from Gramsci:
Pessimism of the intellect, Optimism of the will 

Steven’s  website:  https://www.stevenseidenberg.com/

Instagram: steven.seidenberg

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